Moscow Journal

Russian Dirge: Where Are Snows of Yesteryear?

By MICHAEL SPECTER

Published: December 12, 1996

MOSCOW, Dec. 11—
Even for Russians, whose character depends famously on a shared ability to endure punishment that would devastate a weaker nation, this has been a particularly trying year.

It started with a war in Chechnya that seemed as if it would never end. Then there was a pivotal presidential election that split the country in painful ways.

Those things happen, though. And Russians, who routinely respond to the question ''How are you?'' with the single word, ''Nothing,'' can handle them. What doesn't happen, however -- at least not in the last century or two and possibly never before -- is a prolonged warm spell in a Russian winter season. There has been no snow in Moscow at all this season, a fact so depressing to average Muscovites that they have trouble even speaking about it.

''It's wrong,'' said Vyacheslav Sesoyev, 65, the proprietor of a central Moscow sporting goods store. ''It's not Russia if it doesn't snow. In the old days we would have thought the C.I.A. did it. The last time this happened was in 1938. I remember it well because my mama cried for the whole month of December.''

Actually 1938 was colder, according to the Federal Meteorological Center. ''It was a warm year,'' said Roman M. Vilfand, the chief meteorologist. ''But not this warm. The Czars began to keep informal records in 1711. Only the year 1879 seems to compare for both warmth and lack of snow.''

In olden days, when there was no snow on major winter holidays, rich landowners would simply bury the lanes and alleyways of their estates in a thick carpet of salt so that troikas could speed across the countryside on something white.

Russians talk with great energy and affection about weeks when the temperature is so low it peels paint off cars. There is no lovelier city than Moscow with a foot of snow on its streets. The rules of meteorology are so strict here that unless snow remains on the ground for five days, it doesn't even qualify as ''true'' snow.

''Actually snow did fall for a couple of hours on Nov. 26.'' Mr. Vilfand said dismissively. ''It wasn't true.'' The average temperature this November was about 39 degrees, 10 degrees higher than normal. Russians don't usually talk about the winter weather because it is usually so brutal and obvious that talk is not required. This year, however, nobody can shut up about the ''black winter,'' which is what people here are already calling it.

''Oh my God, it's just going to make me sick,'' said Galina Timorovna, a vegetable-seller, who like most of her colleagues has pretty strong feelings about the murky relationship between weather and health. ''The cold air cleans your lungs and tightens up your muscles,'' she said, as five women in shawls nodded their agreement. ''This heat just makes you sick.''

There is no telling what might have become of Napoleon or Hitler had they faced winters this mild in the years they tried to invade Russia.

It was 35 degrees in Moscow today -- not exactly a heat wave. But not good enough to count as winter. Everyone here has his own reason to pray for snow. ''Moscow now has 2.5 million cars,'' said Gennadi M. Sychov, a spokesman for the traffic police in a city where daylong traffic jams have become normal. ''Another 500,000 come in and out of town each day.'' He said that within a week of the first real snowfall the number of cars on the road would drop by a third.

Not all warm news is bad news of course.

When a woman showed up at a Moscow vegetable market selling mushrooms she said were picked last week in the woods near here, it made the front page of Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of the country's biggest and best-read newspapers.

Most of the city's residential housing is heated by enormous, dilapidated central boilers. The Mayor's office estimates that bills are a third lower than at this time last year.

And only two people have frozen to death on the city's streets since October.

Moscow is not the only place affected by the strange mass of warm air rushing in from Europe. In the usually frigid Siberian city of Omsk, hunters in cars have been driving through fields in pursuit of rabbits whose prematurely white coats make them easy prey.

In the central city of Novgorod this week daisies bloomed, according to the local press, and garlic shoots have started to emerge from the sandy soil.

''There are some good aspects to a warm winter, I suppose,'' said Galina Bagaeva, a psychologist who works mostly with children. ''But you don't see them in my business. Children are depressed about it. Every drawing is a Christmas drawing. Without snow there is no Christmas in Russia. There is no New Year either.''

There is also no rush for cross-country skis or hockey skates, despite the fact that the sports are two of the fastest-growing winter activities here.

''I may as well go home or go to a beach,'' said Mr. Sesoyev, the sporting goods salesman, standing forlorn and alone in a white winter's wealth of unsold merchandise. ''Who wants it?''

Photo: The lack of snow this winter is so disturbing to Muscovites that they have trouble even speaking about it. Road maintenence crews took advantage of the prolonged warm spell to repair idle snowplow trucks. (Peter Blakely/Saba, for The New York Times)